Easier Way to Open Your Bank Account

At the end of 2012, I saw an interesting press release from Jibun Bank, an online-only bank in Japan. They launched a service for opening a bank account by taking a photo of a driver’s license with a smartphone camera.
First of all, customers download a smartphone application for opening a Jibun Bank account. They then snap their driver’s license photo and the system reads and transmits the data. The customer’s full name, address and date of birth are loaded by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and the data is automatically reflected in the application form screen. They then snap their driver’s license photo and the system reads and transmits the data. After that, the customer inputs their phone number, email address and password. That’s all it takes to open an account.
Customers will receive their cash cards from Jibun Bank within five business days. This is much shorter than the previous process that took about three weeks to receive a card.

Source: Jibun Bank

Jibun Bank said that the system has a function to detect a forged driver’s license and also will abort the process if the system cannot read the driver’s license properly. That is, the system has sufficient security features built in.
Celent believes that the factors below brought this new development:

Enhanced performance of smartphone cameras

Development of the security system

Moreover, this cutting-edge initiative by Jibun Bank is likely to trigger the spread of smartphone banking in the Japanese market.